What were previously "pirates" are now independent space-based factions that can pursue a variety of playstyles, ranging from trade, war and espionage to pure chaos and plunder.

Basically pirates are now minor races.I hope they become politically important like you find in BOTF and CIV5 G&K.

quote:

New expanded Ground Combat with new troop types and an animated ground battle resolution screen

I hope to see light micromanagement in building and organising but with complex invasion mechanics with planet and unit types being meaningfull.Groundcombat in most 4x games is pretty crappy so I wait for new details with interest.

I would recommend tweaking bombarding to a much slower rate and longer reputation hit factor.At moment bombard is a very easy tool to use and makes this new high groundcombat investment not worth it.

I totally agree bombardment is seriously powerful right now. Balance of bombardment to ground combat will be important.

What will also be intriguing will be whether we are able to get resources off of the space faring nations. I suggested this quite some time back when there was attempts to make resources more important. If we can get needed resources from what were pirates then maybe we can tone down the amount of resources in the galaxy and make them more of an important gameplay factor without causing unfixable bottle necks like before.

What were previously "pirates" are now independent space-based factions that can pursue a variety of playstyles, ranging from trade, war and espionage to pure chaos and plunder.

Basically pirates are now minor races.I hope they become politically important like you find in BOTF and CIV5 G&K.

quote:

New expanded Ground Combat with new troop types and an animated ground battle resolution screen

I hope to see light micromanagement in building and organising but with complex invasion mechanics with planet and unit types being meaningfull.Groundcombat in most 4x games is pretty crappy so I wait for new details with interest.

I would recommend tweaking bombarding to a much slower rate and longer reputation hit factor.At moment bombard is a very easy tool to use and makes this new high groundcombat investment not worth it.

Day1 buy.

Agreed on Day 1 buy.

Basically pirates are now minor races. Yeah, they are, but they do not make enough money or have enough resources to be a menace... In combat when facing a lot of them at once, I use seek to damage and not kill because pirates can seldom rebuild/repair (although I would suspect that is 'realistic')... it will be nice to see them more able to sustain themselves.

_____________________________

Remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love -- Olga Romanov.

- Play as an independent space-based faction, a very different play experience from the existing "Empire" gameplay. -- Choose from several playstyles, including Smuggler, Pirate and Mercenary.

- Erik

Only me that gets sort of a privateer feel about this?

Trade some stuff to the empires, get them to like you, upgrade your ship(s) with their tech and fight off your competition... I am probably completely off here, but controlling a single or a few ships could work really well in the DV universe. If that playstyle is coming then it is going to be very, very awesome.

Anyway - enough speculation: I am really looking forward to the new ground combat features. That is going to be a welcome addition. :)

Oh, and explaining pirates with some proper back story is all good. I will probably re-enable the legendary's then (or now actually...)

And: As mentioned by other posters - seems likely that all of these additions will ruin our mods, so I hope we get additional modding capabilities as "compensation".

- Play as an independent space-based faction, a very different play experience from the existing "Empire" gameplay. -- Choose from several playstyles, including Smuggler, Pirate and Mercenary.

- Erik

Only me that gets sort of a privateer feel about this?

Trade some stuff to the empires, get them to like you, upgrade your ship(s) with their tech and fight off your competition... I am probably completely off here, but controlling a single or a few ships could work really well in the DV universe. If that playstyle is coming then it is going to be very, very awesome.

Anyway - enough speculation: I am really looking forward to the new ground combat features. That is going to be a welcome addition. :)

Oh, and explaining pirates with some proper back story is all good. I will probably re-enable the legendary's then (or now actually...)

And: As mentioned by other posters - seems likely that all of these additions will ruin our mods, so I hope we get additional modding capabilities as "compensation".

What struck me was some old feature text that said "play as a space ship captain piloting your own ship", and such as alternative ways to play. This seems like expanding on original ideas that were pretty "loose".

As for being a space ship captain, I have thrown my few euros into the creation of "Star Citizen".

I like the idea of having pre-hyperspace civilizations in the game. Pirates and smugglers sound good, but I've already had enough one smuggler, goes by the name of 'Data'. He has a liking for my Romulan Ale stash.

I really hope the tractor beams aren't purely an offensive weapon. I'd like a way to passively deal with space creatures.

Boarding parties, I wonder if I can mod this to become a transporter party, rather than an assault pod. Just thinking out loud here.

Ground combat improvements sound ok. Gonna be a headache making tank images for my Trek mods. They don't seem to use much armour. I agree with Ash and Haree about nerfing the bombardment. Something needs to be done there.

quote:

I'm really hoping it doesn't affect the mods, since it will take another 6 months for the mod makers to get everything back into working order again if it does.

Shark, I still haven't got my mods updated for Legends! Modding characters was just too time consuming. We had the chance to add hundreds of characters to our mods, but that was a serious amount of data entry, typing in every single attribute.

I hope this is sorted for Shadows and we can generate random stats for our custom characters.

Overall though I like what I hear. Definately a first day purchase for me also.

ORIGINAL: Igard I like the idea of having pre-hyperspace civilizations in the game. Pirates and smugglers sound good, but I've already had enough one smuggler, goes by the name of 'Data'. He has a liking for my Romulan Ale stash.

Data has been keeping a low profile of late... I have told my guards to keep an eye out though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard Boarding parties, I wonder if I can mod this to become a transporter party, rather than an assault pod. Just thinking out loud here.

That is a good point. But IGard, you would know this better than I, would there not be some kind of transporter countermeasure during combat. To coin a phrase from one of our many Star Trek versus Star Wars battles...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard Ground combat improvements sound ok. Gonna be a headache making tank images for my Trek mods. They don't seem to use much armour. I agree with Ash and Haree about nerfing the bombardment. Something needs to be done there.

I have found plenty of Klingon and Romulan armor, but seriously, never anything about Federation tanks...

Does this mean that you will introduce alternative faster than light travel modes for the different races....like wormholes, jumpgates, and jumplanes?

Also, what about planetary construction, Dyson Sphere's, Ring World's...those are long sought after additions by me and others? Will those be introduced? I think they could really be integral when contemplating space based civilizations?

BTW..the expansion sounds very intriguing...keep at it and don't let the storm get ya down (though I know that's hard...I went through Hurricane Opal as a kid and spent a couple of weeks living in a third world state).

_____________________________

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will." -Tennyson

ORIGINAL: Igard I like the idea of having pre-hyperspace civilizations in the game. Pirates and smugglers sound good, but I've already had enough one smuggler, goes by the name of 'Data'. He has a liking for my Romulan Ale stash.

Data has been keeping a low profile of late... I have told my guards to keep an eye out though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard Boarding parties, I wonder if I can mod this to become a transporter party, rather than an assault pod. Just thinking out loud here.

That is a good point. But IGard, you would know this better than I, would there not be some kind of transporter countermeasure during combat. To coin a phrase from one of our many Star Trek versus Star Wars battles...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard Ground combat improvements sound ok. Gonna be a headache making tank images for my Trek mods. They don't seem to use much armour. I agree with Ash and Haree about nerfing the bombardment. Something needs to be done there.

I have found plenty of Klingon and Romulan armor, but seriously, never anything about Federation tanks...

hehe, you do realize that beaming that photon torpedo will be problematic, being that ISDs have both ray and particle shielding that is always active, right?

I think the ground combat complication is a move in the wrong direction. The AI does a poor job now. Adding to the complexity will make it even less competitive as well as increasing player micromanagment.

I realize I am in the minority on this. So, if this is going to be the implementation, I'd like to be able to mod the game or change it during setup so that bombardment does not damage reputation any more than invasions, or perhaps even disable invasions.

It is certainly easy to glass a planet. Hell, we can do that now without true spaceflight. Invasions don't make much sense unless the planet has the same species.

And yeah, I'll buy the expansion to get some of the improvements, but I'd like the option to configure the game to avoid some of what I consider to be the sillier parts or even just to vary the type of game I play.

_____________________________

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.-Edmund Burke Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.-Judge Learned Hand

I don't mind ground combat improvements per se, but it's such a small and frankly rather uninteresting part of the game that I'd much rather the development time be put elsewhere. So kinda meh at that feature.

The rest sounds great though. Can't wait to see how space-based factions play out. There's some real potential there, though it's all in the execution I think. Hopefully the AI will be able to cope with it too, both in terms of being a space-based faction and in terms of fighting against a space-based faction. Any hints as to how resource and cash management will be for those factions? I suppose the resource part could be kept mostly the same( with a heavy focus on cargo bays in the ship/base designs to compensate for lack of planetary storage), but unless you now allow ships and bases to have actual populations in them, I'm kinda interested in how you plan to replace tax income and the research aspects.

Also, can we have larger maps? And maybe a bit more game options( global hyperspace speed and fuel usage multipliers?).

StarFighters and area weapons will become much more important with assault pods roaming all over the place. Keeping lighter defended vessels like AWACs destroyers/Frigates away from the enemy will be all the more important. I have had to sacrifice troop modules and and the like to fit that bulky long range sensor pallet on a ship. I forsee new tactics...

And Special Forces... Embrace your destiny; Join delta squad. Four - oh, a simple uncomplicate soldier. Six two -- the Heart and soul of your unit. Oh seven -- the fiercest hunter of them all. Excuse me... got a little carried away there...

< Message edited by tjhkkr -- 11/2/2012 11:47:33 PM >

_____________________________

Remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love -- Olga Romanov.

I have to be honest: independent races don't excite me much but detailed ground combat and AI improvements are exciting. I'll be buying it the day it comes out!

Even though I said independent races don't excite me much, you know what would be cool? If you could start as an independent race or pirate and after satisfying some conditions (after a lot of work) you could turn into an empire and continue the game as a regular empire. That would give a sense of accomplishment and extra incentive in playing these independent races. I hope that is possible.

A. Is it an expansion needing the others to work, like Legends? B. Or is it a stand alone exapansion with all the others included? (Not likely but thought I would ask) C. What is the price range, same as Legends? Asking as I would like to get it and would like to start putting pennies aside. D. Will the race portraits be updated? IMHO they should have been updated in Legends, a variant for each character type of the race, leader, general etc.

Well this is a valid question/concern; In order to make the game easier on the wallets of new players (which we obviously cannot have enough of!) it would make sense to make it available in some kind of bundle deal or in a standalone version (with perhaps a discount for those already having the game). Nobody is going to shell out premium price for the base game and all its expansions in one go.

ORIGINAL: Simulation01 Also, what about planetary construction, Dyson Sphere's, Ring World's...those are long sought after additions by me and others? Will those be introduced? I think they could really be integral when contemplating space based civilizations?

+1

_____________________________

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” ― Christopher Hitchens

I want to know "exactly" what you did to "improve" the AI. It's all too easy to make a blanket statement like that and no real improvement even exists. So please in "detail" tell us how you improved the AI.

I want to know "exactly" what you did to "improve" the AI. It's all too easy to make a blanket statement like that and no real improvement even exists. So please in "detail" tell us how you improved the AI.